CHAPTER XIV.

AMERICA—THE CREOLES AND INDIANS OF THE RIVER PLATE—THE UNITED STATES DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THIS CENTURY—THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS—DRINKING IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE PRESENT TIME—LICENSING AND PROHIBITORY LEGISLATION—THE MAINE LIQUOR LAW—ITS OPERATION AND PARTIAL FAILURE—PERMISSIVE LEGISLATION—INEBRIATE ASYLUMS.

Once more we must follow the course of civilisation westward, this time across the Atlantic, and in the New World we shall find much to interest us in connection with drinking habits and their effects upon society. Every phase of the subject may be studied in America—the aborigines, with their primitive methods of preparing intoxicating drinks and their unbridled indulgence in them; the half-caste, who has acquired all the vices but few of the virtues of civilisation; the European emigrant, usually sober if a German; often intemperate if he comes from Great Britain or Ireland; and finally, we find there the Puritan spirit in full operation, and the law, backed by public opinion, effectually suppressing not alone drunkenness, but in many places even the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages.

A curious and very repulsive feature of our subject presents itself in that part of South America which is watered by the River Plate, but it must be referred to, first, because it exhibits in striking contrast the drinking habits of civilised and barbarous races; and, secondly, because it almost places beyond a doubt the question of the aboriginal tendency to use native intoxicating beverages.

In the neighbourhood of the Plate there are three varieties of men—two of the Creole, descendants of the Spaniards, whose habits are quite dissimilar, and then the native Indians. All three indulge in alcoholic drinks, but in varying degrees.[326] The inhabitants of the large towns, such as Buenos Ayres, Monte Video, Rosario, &c., are as civilised as Europeans, and much more sober than the majority. They usually drink light French or Spanish wine in great moderation, and mostly diluted with water. This is taken at meals, and at other times coffee, iced syrup drinks, and light beer are the customary beverages. Spirits are hardly ever tasted. The inhabitants of the interior are barely civilised, and the farther one recedes from the large towns the more distinctly the Indian blood may be traced. They are great drunkards and gamblers, and are only deterred by poverty (for they often work for food and lodging only), or by their distance from a camp-store, from habitual and continuous intemperance. They consume a raw spirit called caña, distilled from the sugar-cane, which is pure, very strong, and not disagreeable to the taste. As for the third variety, the Indians, they are men of the very lowest type, said, indeed, to have been brought under the civilising influence of the Jesuits some centuries back, but retaining only a portion of their sacred nomenclature, and a few of the rudest arts, such as plaiting straw. These Indians are spread over an immense tract of country lying between the northern frontier of the Argentine Republic and the southern borders of Paraguay, and they drink, raw, a strong spirit which they distil from the sweet beans of the algaroba (the locust or carob bean). The process of distillation they have probably learned from the Europeans, though not from the Jesuits, who endeavoured to win them over from barbarism to civilisation, but they are said to have another mode of preparing an intoxicating beverage, which they adopt in common with the natives of the South Sea Islands. The drink, called cava, is prepared by masticating the root of the plant so called,[327] and expectorating the chewed plant into a vessel; to this, water is added, and the whole is allowed to ferment. Morewood says that in the South Sea Islands no one is allowed to chew the root but young persons with good teeth, clean mouths, and free from disease, and he describes at considerable length both the manufacture of the cava drink and its effects.[328] It is an aromatic, stimulating narcotic, with sudorific properties, and to a stranger unaccustomed to its use it operates like spirits, quickly causing intoxication. The reader must pardon this reference to what is certainly a horrible and filthy process, but it is mentioned in order to show that the arts of civilisation are by no means essential to the gratification of the desire for intoxicating beverages. And here, in these three varieties of mankind, we have another illustration of the principle laid down in our first chapter, that the passion for drink is more unbridled in the savage than in civilised men. For whilst the cultivated race is remarkably sober, the half-castes in their immediate contiguity are drunkards and gamblers, and the aborigines of the interior, with many of whom they rarely come into contact, are the most debauched of all. When they can procure spirits, or when they prepare their native beverages, they drink until they are intoxicated, and remain in that condition until the supply is completely exhausted.

* * * * *

In no people has the transition from intemperance to sobriety been so marked as in those of the United States. The accounts of their drinking habits in the early part of this century are hardly credible, and are repulsive beyond description; in fact, they are worse than anything to be found in modern European records. The price of the native spirits was exceedingly low, varying from 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d. per gallon, and the consumption was enormous. We have some hesitation, after what has been said concerning Sweden, in accepting statistics as a guide, but Morewood gives a table, which he says was compiled by the marshals of the United States and the secretaries of the territories,[329] and which shows that in one year the distillation and consumption of spirits reached 25,456,432 gallons; whilst according to another writer the quantity distilled in 1817 was about 25,000,000. But it must not be forgotten that a very large proportion of this liquid fire was used in barter with the Indians, with what effect history has but too faithfully recorded. Nor were these all the spirits which were consumed in the United States, for we find that as early as 1790 about 3,679,000 gallons were imported, and in the years immediately preceding 1806 the average annual importation had reached 9,750,000 gallons. Besides being manufactured from the usual substances, such as cereals, the native spirits were distilled from peaches, apples, and two kinds of maple; and not only was their price low, but the charge for licenses to sell them and other intoxicating drinks was equally so, varying from ten to twenty-five dollars; in fact, every possible encouragement was given to the production and consumption of home-made alcoholic beverages. Wines, too, were largely imported from all parts of the world, and in 1805 a company of emigrants planted what appears to have been the first vineyard in the United States, namely, in New Switzerland, Indiana, from which very excellent wine was manufactured.

With all these inducements to excessive indulgence in drink, it is not surprising that drunkenness was widespread; and the chief sinners and sufferers were the emigrants and the aboriginal races. The custom already existed at that time of drinking what may be called slang mixtures, “mint-juleps,” “sherry-cobblers,” &c., at bars; and although the habits of the people of the United States have since reformed, that still appears to be the characteristic form of intemperance, at least in large cities. Of the temperance societies which were started to counteract the terrible plague, we shall speak in the next chapter, but in proof of the condition of the people at that time it will suffice to mention two or three facts. In 1821, a law was passed which placed the property of habitual drunkards on the same footing as that of lunatics, handing it over to a committee of the Court of Chancery. What a blessing it would be to thousands of suffering wives and children, and to society generally, not excepting the unfortunate “habitual drunkards” themselves, if such a law existed and were strictly enforced in England to-day. Would it not?

Again, from a report of the trustees of the almshouse for the city and county of Baltimore in 1827, it appears that of 623 adults admitted during the year 1826, it was positively ascertained that 554 had been placed there on account of the poverty to which they were reduced by excessive drunkenness. As to crime, in a report presented by Dr. Francis Lieber to the Philadelphia Society, he attributed nearly all the crime of the country to drunkenness, for which the chief remedy proposed by him was “education.” Moreover, the chaplain of the state prison at Sing-Sing, who was acquainted with the whole of the prison system of the United States at that time, said that of the prisoners who had been under his care, 75 in 100 acknowledged themselves to be habitual drunkards, and 44 in 100 confessed that they had committed their crimes under the influence of liquor.[330] And in regard to disease, it is stated that in the summer of 1832, during a cholera epidemic in Albany, out of 336 deaths, “138 were foreigners; that 140 of the victims were hard drinkers, and 55 drank freely.”[331]

Concerning the Indians, the writer here quoted said,[332] that the introduction of rum and whisky amongst them was a curse which they owed entirely to the whites, and that it has been a powerful agent in their destruction and demoralisation. At all councils it is freely distributed, either before or pending negotiations, and “hundreds,” he said, “breathe their last with the rum bottle in their hands.” No wonder that the poor Indians were impelled to avenge their wrongs and thus to accelerate their doom. The ordinary canons of civilisation and morality seem to have been completely ignored by the white man in his negotiations with the redskin. Throughout the civilised world a contract made between two men one of whom is intoxicated has no validity in law, and cannot be enforced, but it was not so in the white man’s dealings with the savage. There the rum bottle was the substitute for the pen which signed the contract, and the musket or rifle was the agent employed to compel its fulfilment. A more beneficent system exists at present, but it is too late, for this is the condition of the Indian of to-day, and of his relations with the white man, as described by an intelligent and impartial observer:—“Spirits and strong liquors of all descriptions are contraband in the Indian territory, and vigorous measures are taken to carry out the prohibition; but, in spite of the law, it is not impossible to obtain liquor at the settlements situated in the vicinity of the railways. At those places, however, that are under the immediate control of the military authorities, the execution of the law is strictly enforced.” But the same writer tells us that they (the Indians) “have acquired all the vices and debaucheries of the so-called civilised people (men who have escaped the meshes of the law, or reprobates who could do no good in civilised society) with whom they have come into contact, acquiring few of the virtues of civilisation, whilst the many noble qualities that adorn the character of the savage are sunk and forgotten in their attempts to imitate their white conquerors.”[333] This is what drink and civilisation has done for the American Indian, but we must now return to his “white conquerors.”

We have said that in the early part of this century the drunkenness which prevailed in the United States was appalling, but the energy which has carried the nation forward in all the paths of civilisation, which has succeeded in abolishing a deep-rooted system of domestic slavery, though it has been at the sacrifice of much blood and treasure; that same energy, we say, has also been successfully directed to the suppression of intemperance, which is as great a danger to any nation as slavery or communism of the worst description. From the third decade to about the middle of this century, the American people trusted to the effects of moral suasion for curing the evils of drunkenness, but it will be found that already in the year 1852 the State of Vermont had passed a prohibitory liquor law,[334] and from that time to the present the war has been waged between the State legislatures, more especially those of New England, and the liquor traffic, and in the main the former have been faithfully supported by the force of public opinion. To this portion of the subject we shall return hereafter.

But the measure of success with which the cause of temperance has prevailed has not been uniform, nor has it advanced to the same stage in every part of the Union. In some of the remote States, amongst the miners, for example, an enormous amount of drunkenness exists, whilst there are small towns and villages in some of the New England States where it is almost impossible to obtain intoxicating drinks, and where drunkenness is unknown. The reader will therefore appreciate the difficulty of forming and pronouncing a correct judgment upon the drinking habits of the people of this vast republic. The difficulty is greatly increased by the fact that the contest between the State, aided by individual and concerted action on the one hand, and the drink-sellers and their supporters on the other, is still actively carried on, and every day therefore brings its chances and changes. For example, it was only last April that an effort was made by the advocates of the drink-sellers in the senate of the State of New York to carry a measure repealing an Act passed in 1866, and part of another of 1857, “to suppress intemperance and to regulate the sale of intoxicating liquors.”[335] During the debate one of the senators who opposed the repeal drew some pictures of the liquor dens and cellars which he said would, by the proposed bill, be allowed to dispense poison to the poor and vicious, and he launched bitter anathemas against its promoters.[336] The bill was ultimately lost, but if the liquor-sellers of New York at all resemble those of Old England, they may probably renew the attempt. That there is much drunkenness in some of the large towns, especially in New York, cannot be doubted, but it is not to be compared in extent with similar places in Great Britain or even in some Continental countries. In New York only two or three days before the debate above referred to, namely, on Sunday, 14th April, an attempt was made to storm a closed drinking saloon by a band of men “already half intoxicated and clamouring for more liquor.” Before the police could interfere considerable damage was done to the premises, and when the ringleaders were brought before the magistrates, “they were recognised as members of a dissolute gang who infest the neighbourhood, and who more than once before had disturbed the public peace.”[337] Some of them were deservedly imprisoned; and we venture to say, without fear of contradiction, notwithstanding our bad reputation in that respect, that such an event would not have occurred in England as it did there, on Sunday, during the hours of divine service.

But a careful perusal of the newspapers, which, after all, give one a very fair estimate of the moral condition of the United States, shows beyond a doubt that alcoholic drinks are a less fruitful source of crime and misery there than with us in England. For example, in the Boston papers, under the head of “criminal matters,” we find men indicted for such crimes as embezzlement, passing counterfeit coin, gambling, and even highway robbery, but drink and drunkenness are hardly ever mentioned. That they exist we shall show later on, and the papers give accounts of temperance unions, at which it is proposed to establish halls, gymnasiums, and reading-rooms as “antidotes to the drinking saloon.” And this is in Boston, the “hub of the universe.” The same applies to the Philadelphia journals, and there, by the way, they are agitating for a change in the fiscal regulations of the excise, in order to enable the Americans to export grain to England in its most highly concentrated form, namely, distilled spirits. Congress, they think, should allow a drawback on spirits which are exported, in which case “the liquor trade in our own city” (Philadelphia) “would undoubtedly engage largely in the traffic.” We cannot help thinking that the whole thing is the notion of some Yankee humorist who intends to visit England, and would like to rouse from his long rest a real specimen of the English protectionist of the old school, to see whether he bore any resemblance to men of the present day!

In the Californian journals even, the vice of drunkenness is not so frequently referred to as in almost any of our newspapers, although the deeds of swindlers, forgers, robbers, and murderers are plainly set forth, and even political shortcomings are visited with severe condemnation. One of the papers[338] recently had a column filled with extracts from Californian newspapers having reference to a gentleman whose political views do not seem to find favour with some of his countrymen. He is a senator, and is spoken of as a “coward” and a “traitor,” and his followers are “law-defying miscreants engaged in diabolical schemes.” “The mob element,” we are told, “is in the ascendancy, communism stalks abroad. Hemp is his” (the senator’s) “stock-in-trade, and a portion of it might be advantageously used to suspend his worthless carcass.” So the reader will observe that drunkenness is not always a necessary concomitant of crime, and that there is a license which is unconnected with the liquor traffic. If we take up the New York papers, we seem to come nearer home. There we read of wife-beating, and “stabbing whilst drunk.” “Liquor stores” are advertised for sale or to be let, but they are few in number as compared with similar announcements on this side of the Atlantic.

A stranger who travels through the United States, receives the impression that there is comparatively little alcohol drunk by any persons excepting foreigners, and that the people of the country are sober, and this impression is to some extent, but not entirely, correct. The traveller may visit and dine in large hotels in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, and he will hardly see any beer or wine upon the table,[339] but——if he follows the guests after dinner, he will find, in many places, that they adjourn to the bar and drink whisky! Bar-drinking, especially what Dickens called “perpendicular drinking,” that is, taking a stand-up drink and then going off, is the usual American mode of “liquoring up,” and that is, in some towns, carried to great excess.[340] But, says an English author, of the man who thus indulges, “the number of drinks he will take at that bar before business hours are over would astonish people of the same class here.”[341] And the class referred to comprises “merchants, generals, colonels, senators, and officers of state, who patronise these bars as freely as we would a flower-show,”—a “class of men who in our country would no more be seen entering a public-house than they would be seen entering a house of ill-fame.”[342] This statement is probably a little exaggerated: the American “bar” can hardly be compared to an English gin-palace, and, moreover, strangers are apt to be misled as to the character of the persons whom they see in such places. There are drinking shops in certain parts of London which are regularly frequented by barristers, solicitors, &c., but who are they? Why, the scum of the profession to which they belong, and it would be a great mistake of any one who saw them there to conclude that such places are supported by respectable men of any rank or calling. The most repulsive thing about American drinking is its slanginess, and this is what often deceives the casual visitor. Drinks containing in reality very little alcohol are baptized with names that savour of dissoluteness and debauchery. Gin-slings, cocktails, tangle-legs, eye-openers, morning glories, are suggestive of drinking debauches over-night and tippling renewed at daybreak, whereas the truth is that the drinking habits of some States really resemble those of the more sober Continental countries. In winter or in bad weather, drinks are consumed too freely indeed which contain a certain proportion of alcohol, whilst in summer the beverages are to a large extent what are known here as “temperance drinks.”

Their passion for advertising, too, would lead a stranger to suppose that the Americans are a nation of inveterate drunkards who glory in their shame. “Bitters,” says one of the authors we have quoted, “are advertised in every newspaper, placarded on every shed, painted in enormous letters on every fence and rock where a human eye may be expected to rest. I sometimes encountered these advertisements in Southern swamps and Western prairies, where one would imagine the only customers would be polecats, ‘bars’ (bears), or buffaloes.” It is said that in a graveyard in Gloucester, Mass., the following advertisement meets the eye of the visitor:—“If you would keep out here, use Hochstetter’s bitters.”[343] Yes; but it is also “said” that somewhere in an English churchyard there is the following characteristic epitaph:—

“Beneath this stone, in hopes of Zion, Doth rest the landlord of the Lion: Resigned unto the heavenly will, His son keeps on the business still.”

But we must repeat that the people of the United States are comparatively sober, and that the low drinking which we have in England is unknown excepting in a few large towns. Intoxicating drinks are very little used in families, and are only offered to visitors. It is only in large towns that “cellars” are kept, and then chiefly by rich men. Tea, coffee, and iced drinks supply the place of wine, beer, or porter at table, and nothing surprises an American so much, when he visits this country, as to see alcoholic drinks always brought out, and present at every lunch and dinner. There is one circumstance which, in the course of his inquiries, has struck the author as being quite as serious as the intemperance amongst the poorer classes which is so much talked and preached about in England, and it is this: In the United States there is no worldly advantage, but the reverse, in being a drinker of alcohol. In many places the minister of religion must be a total abstainer, and it is always a merit in every profession (generally speaking) to refrain from the use of intoxicants. Is it so here? Many ministers, it is true, are abstainers, but how many are there, on the other hand, who dine and drink _freely_ with the wealthier members of their congregations, but who seldom go near the poorer ones, because the former pay the best? The author was discussing this matter with the chief officer of one of the largest steamers sailing from Liverpool, who told him that he had formerly been a total abstainer, but that he had found it absolutely necessary to recommence taking alcohol as it militated against his advancement in life. And if it is a disadvantage to be a drinker in the United States, still more so is it to be a drink-seller. A “grog-seller” there may build any number of churches or endow any number of institutions out of the profits of his trade, but he will be a “grog-seller” still; whilst in England, if he has fifty gin-palaces, and supplies them all from one warehouse and office or from one brewery, he calls himself a wine and spirit merchant, or a brewer, and his vocation presents no obstacle to his being allowed to rank side by side with the inferior orders of our nobility. That drunkenness is not a prevailing vice in the States is best proved by the fact that drunken people are rarely seen in the streets. The author has ascertained this from friends who have travelled over every portion of the States, and a near relative of his who resided about a year in Louisville tells him that during the whole of that time he saw only two instances, the one being an old man who was followed about by a crowd of urchins reviling and mocking at him as they would at a howling idiot in England.

But we must now consider what share legislation has had in bringing about the change from the gross intemperance which existed all over the States about the middle of this century to the comparative sobriety of the present day, and with this view a cursory glance at the liquor laws in different parts of the Union, as they exist _in theory_, may not be uninteresting nor unprofitable. In Maine, the so-called “Maine law” entirely prohibits the manufacture or sale of intoxicating drink except for medicinal, mechanical, and manufacturing purposes, and then only through the municipal authorities. Should any one commit a breach of the law, he is to be punished by imprisonment two months in the county gaol and fined a thousand dollars. Public-houses are spoken of in the Act as “drinking-houses” and “tippling shops,” and the keeper of such a house is liable to imprisonment for each conviction. The relatives of drunkards have a right of action against any one selling liquors to such drunkards, and even persons who are found intoxicated in their own houses are liable to thirty days’ imprisonment; but, in the words of the Act, “said judge or justice may remit any portion of said punishment, and order the prisoner to be discharged whenever he shall become satisfied that the objects of the law and the good of the public and the prisoner would be advanced thereby.”[344] From this and all other drink legislation in the United States it will be seen that the law regards the liquor-seller as the chief law-breaker, and the drunkard as his victim, though himself culpable.

A similar law to the “Maine law,” with modifications, exists in some of the other New England States. New Hampshire “has a prohibitory law, which is not enforced to any great extent. An effort to secure a constabulary bill has also proved a failure.”[345] Vermont, as we have already stated, has a prohibitory law, and a “Civil Damage Act,” passed in 1869, by which the drink-seller is held liable for any damage done by a drunken person to whom he has supplied the drink.[346] In New Hampshire, saloons, bars, &c., are declared to be “common nuisances kept in violation of the law;”[347] and intoxicated persons may be detained until they are sober, and then forced, on pain of imprisonment, to declare on oath where they obtained the liquor. In Massachusetts the law is not prohibitory, but there are various classes of licenses, those for light drinks being much less expensive than licenses to sell spirits. In New Jersey there is an Act which enables the authorities to regulate licenses, but inasmuch as it does not compel them to grant any unless they choose, the people of Chatham, Co. Morris, have refused to do so, and their right has been formally recognised by the Supreme Court. They have, therefore, a local option or permissive bill, or at least what is one there, where the force of public opinion makes itself felt through the local authorities. In Rhode Island and New York there is regulated licensing. The licenses are granted by commissioners appointed by the mayors in cities, subject to the approval of the aldermen in New York and Brooklyn. In Connecticut and some other States there are permissive bills with regulated licensing, also enforced closing on Sundays and election days, which is the rule in several other States. In Kentucky, North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas, &c., there are local option bills. In Pennsylvania, there is regulated licensing, with local option in some places; and in most of the other States there is regulated licensing, excepting in Nevada, where, we are told, “there is no law on the statute book relating to the traffic in alcoholic liquors.”[348]

A word concerning Nevada. We do not know whether the absence of legislative interference has anything to do with it, but it is certainly a “frightful example.” It was at Virginia city in that State that Artemus Ward said, in taking his departure, “I never, gentlemen, was in a city where I was treated so well, nor, I will add, so _often_.” And Sir C. Dilke, who visited it, says that with ten thousand inhabitants it was blessed with five hundred whisky-shops; in some of which “diggers might be seen tossing the whisky down their throats with a scowl of resolve as though they were committing suicide, which indeed, except in point of speed, is probably the case.”[349]

But whilst this is the condition of the remote States of the Union, where civilisation has but recently set its foot, a very different state of affairs is found to exist in the New England and other north-eastern States. It may at once be remarked, that so far as actual prohibition is concerned, in the large towns especially, the “Maine Liquor Law” has proved a failure. Upon that score all kinds of authors, excepting perhaps a few extreme teetotallers, and all observant travellers are agreed. In the article already referred to, Mr. M’Carthy somewhat exaggerates the failure, for he says that in Portland, when he visited that city, there was no more concealment in the sale of drink than there would have been in a public-house in Fleet Street.[350] The whole of his article, indeed, betrays a mind which had largely prejudged the question, and had been prepared to find failure rather than success; but it is not he alone who has testified to the breakdown of the prohibitory law. Mr. W. S. Caine, the leader of the temperance movement in and around Liverpool, who is certainly not likely to underrate efforts in the cause which he warmly advocates, has favoured the author with an account of two visits made by him (in 1875-76) to the United States, when he made a point of inquiring into the law, and he says that “he was reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that it needs considerable modification.” Unlike Mr. M’Carthy, he says he “wandered about the city of Portland looking for a public-house in vain.”[351] He could see nothing externally that would lead him to suppose that any building was devoted to the purpose; but when he asked in various shops “where he could get a drink,” he had a score of places pointed out to him. He then did what Mr. M’Carthy had done with the same result, namely, paid a visit to the English Consul. That gentleman had sent home a strong report against the Maine Law,[352] and he satisfied Mr. Caine of the ease with which liquor could be procured by taking him to at least a score of places where it was freely sold. Mr. Caine also gives an amusing account of a temperance meeting which he attended at Bangor (State of Maine). “On the platform,” he says, “were one hundred and fifty men decorated with sashes and medals, the speakers and president being ladies. The men with medals were drunkards who had been reclaimed in the city of Bangor during the winter by the ‘Ladies’ Temperance Association.’ At the close of the meeting, I spoke to the lady president, and expressed my surprise that in a town where liquor was prohibited, both in sale and manufacture, one society of women should be able to find no less than one hundred and fifty drunkards in six months. She replied that the law was a dead letter in Bangor, and that it was only of use in the country districts. The speeches at the meeting were of the same character as those delivered at English temperance meetings: the rum-sellers of Bangor were denounced, their victims pitied, and it was clear that these good women had just the same difficulties to contend with as we teetotallers find in Liverpool, prohibition notwithstanding.”[353]

But if a doubt remains as to the failure of the legislation so far as prohibition is concerned, it may be set at rest by reading the declarations of the teetotal judges of the land. One of those must suffice. The “National Temperance Society of New York” has published a pamphlet (No. 11) called the “Maine Law Vindicated,” by the Hon. Woodbury Davis, Judge of the Supreme Court of Maine, in which that Judge enters at length into the whole subject, showing the moral influence of the law, how it is enforced, the probability of its being ultimately successful, &c., and one of his concluding sentences runs thus:—“If such men as Dr. Bacon, and many others that might be named, instead of carping at it, and at best refusing to advocate it, would come out publicly and give it a hearty and cordial support, its provisions would soon be made more stringent, the tone of public sentiment in regard to it would become higher and stronger, and its more vigorous execution would soon make it a terror _to multitudes of evil-doers who now trample it under foot_.” We have italicised the last words to show that, from whatever cause, the Maine Law has not accomplished what is proposed by it, namely, the entire suppression of the liquor traffic.

But although Professor Davis’s remarks may apply to the State of Maine, they do not accurately represent public feeling throughout the United States regarding the Maine Law. In Massachusetts, a prohibitory law was in force until the year 1875, but as far back as 1867 a vigorous effort was made to repeal it. Petitions signed by about 35,000 persons for, and about 26,000 against, the repeal were presented to the Legislature, and a special committee of both houses was appointed to inquire into the operation of the law. Their report was a very decided one against it.[354] Without referring to the theoretical part of the question, we will only mention a few of the practical results at which the committee arrived. The whole number of places in Boston, they found, in which liquor was sold in 1854, that is, before the passing of the Prohibitory Act, was 1500, whilst twelve years later, in 1866, 1515 such places existed. The number of drunken persons taken up by the police in 1854 was 6983, while in 1866 it was 15,542.[355] In most of the large towns, such as Boston, Cambridge, Lowell, Charlestown, New Bedford, &c., the sale was found to be just as unrestricted as before the passing of the Prohibitory Act. One of the statements of the committee, “upon the evidence before them, was that it was a fatal mistake on the part of the leaders of the so-called temperance movement to prohibit the sale of cider and light beer.” And the committee recommended that the law should encourage the consumption of those liquors “in the true interests of temperance,” in substitution of stronger and more dangerous liquors.[356] The result of that inquiry was the repeal in 1875 of the Prohibitory Bill, and the passing of an Act which regulates the price of licenses according to the kind of liquor sold. For example, the licensing committee _may_ charge up to 1000 dollars for a license to sell liquors of any kind to be drunk on the premises; whilst they may not charge to any one, not being a brewer, more than 150 dollars for a license to sell malt liquors, cider, and light wines containing not more than 15 per cent. of alcohol, to be drunk off the premises.[357] This Act (which is now in force, an amendment of it having been vetoed by the Governor) is intended to be a test of the efficacy of permissive legislation coupled with restrictions where licenses are granted, as against entire prohibition. For, as Governor Rice said, in his address to the Legislature of Massachusetts in 1876,[358] “It expressly declares that nothing in it shall be so construed as to require the mayor and aldermen of a city or the selectmen of a town to grant licenses. Every city and town, therefore, has the right and the opportunity secured to it to forbid altogether the sale of intoxicating liquors within its limits; and in this particular and in others the present law seems to involve the principles and measures which the most advanced temperance men in Great Britain are seeking to carry out in that country.”[359] Governor Rice then recites the penalties and forfeitures that attach to breaches of the licensing regulations, which include the very important restriction “not to sell at a bar;” and he goes on to say, that the Board of License Commissioners of the city of Boston believe that under the law “something has been gained.”[360] The law is recognised; there is a decrease in the sale of intoxicating liquors; and the number of liquor shops had diminished from 3090 in December 1874 to 2483 in September 1875. And finally, the Governor confirms what is usually held to be the case, namely, that whilst it is impossible to enforce prohibition in large towns, “in sparsely settled agricultural districts almost any measure of repression approved by the more intelligent and virtuous citizens of the neighbourhood can be enforced.”[361]

This, then, may be taken as the last enlightened utterance in the United States as to the impossibility of carrying out the Maine Law in its integrity; but, now, if we are asked whether the repressive legislation of the United States has tended to the diminution of drunkenness and to the elevation of the national morality, then the reply will be an emphatic “Yes.” We have quoted Judge Davis against the law, now let us quote him for it. Whilst there was no legal restriction upon the sale, he says: “It was permitted in almost every town; nearly every tavern in town and in city had its ‘bar;’ at almost every village and corner was a grog-shop; and in most places of that kind more than one, where old men and young spent their earnings in dissipation; men helplessly drunk on the streets and by the wayside were a common sight; and at elections, at military trainings, and at other public gatherings, there were scenes of debauchery and riot enough to make one ashamed of one’s race.” (Let us remark, by way of parenthesis, that this is but a slight exaggeration of the condition of England in our own time.) Well, Judge Davis goes on to show that the Maine law has effectually cleansed and reformed society in that State. “No observing man,” he says, “who has lived in the State for twenty years, and has had an opportunity to know the facts, can doubt that the Maine Law has produced a hundred times more visible improvement in the character, condition, and prosperity of our people than any other law that was ever enacted.”[362]

And what he says is true. Almost every writer on the United States bears out his statement although they may not perhaps attribute all the improvement to this particular law. Even Mr. M’Carthy says that it acts as a check upon drinking, because it draws it into low places, and makes it disreputable;[363] and that the evasion is chiefly by foreigners, but that the Americans themselves are “largely total abstainers.”[364] He and others say that it enables the authorities to make raids upon men who carry on the trade with effrontery, and many instances are given where they have been forced by the law, with public opinion to support it, to give up the trade altogether, at least for a time. One case mentioned by Mr. M’Carthy[365] is worth recording. In Rutland, Vermont, drinking was carried to such excess that the authorities forbade the sale of drinks in the bars of the hotels. The hotel keepers “struck,” and closed their houses; but the inhabitants turned their houses into hotels, and met travellers at the railway station. This checkmated the regular innkeepers, who were glad enough to reopen their houses and submit to the law. Mr. M’Carthy adds, that a fortnight afterwards he obtained brandy at an hotel in Rutland; a fact which proves that it is possible to evade the law, and which is not calculated to raise Englishmen in the estimation of the Americans.

Another author, already quoted, says that wherever the cause of temperance is strong enough to get the Maine Law passed, it is strong enough to force the liquor traffic to withdraw from public gaze. “In desperate cases,” he says, “it has to reduce itself to the exhibition of Greenland pigs and other curious animals, charging twenty-five cents for the sight of the pig, and throwing in a gin-cocktail gratuitously.”[366] And it is most remarkable, he adds, how this encourages the study of natural history, for the same persons have been known to go over and over again to study the habits of the “Greenland pig!” But it is unnecessary to cite authors. In these days of rapid locomotion, every reader must have frequent opportunities of conversing with men of different nationalities who have resided or travelled in the United States, and if he takes the trouble to inquire for himself, he will find the following to be the facts in regard to American temperance legislation. So far as entire prohibition is concerned, it has failed in the large towns, but has been successful in many small towns and country villages. In places where public opinion has demanded, or cordially supported, any form of repression or restriction, it has made the traffic disreputable; has removed temptation out of the way of those who would, if they could, control themselves, and has reduced the habitual, callous drunkard, as well as the man who supplies him, to the position of a law-breaker and a sneak. It has raised the whole moral tone of society and the material condition of the masses. The failure has been where the law has tried to force prohibition upon an unwilling community; the success where a reforming or reformed public opinion has found the law ready to aid it in enforcing sobriety for the benefit of all. In short, the legislation which has succeeded best in the United States is that which gives the option to localities to have liquor sold in their midst or not as they choose,—“permissive legislation,”—and that has indeed been an inestimable boon to the citizens of the Great Republic.

And now we must say a few words, and they must be very few, concerning that new development of the drink question in America, “inebriate asylums.” Attempts have been made to establish them in England,[367] but so far only to a very limited extent, and they are not recognised by the State. In the United States there are at least four such institutions. The “Washingtonian Home” was opened in Boston as far back as 1857; the “New York Inebriate Asylum,” at Binghampton, was founded the following year; the “Sanitarium,” in Philadelphia, started in 1867; and an asylum at Chicago in 1868. These institutions are aided by the State legislatures, and it is calculated that in the one at Boston, out of 3000 inebriates who have been received in nine years, 2000 have been completely cured. They are all voluntary asylums, that is to say, the “patients” are never detained against their will; and those who seek refuge there pay part or the whole cost of their maintenance. Very interesting but painful accounts have been given by visitors of the condition of the inebriates, some of whom are brought by their relatives or friends completely intoxicated; and those who have conversed with the inmates, and with the medical men under whose care they are placed, tell us that there are certain canons of intemperance, if we may call them so, which are quite stable and undeviating. First, it is impossible for a drunkard ever to become a moderate drinker. Secondly, there is no hope for an inebriate until he thoroughly distrusts his own resolution, and excepting as a total abstainer for life. Thirdly, he must avoid on system and on principle the occasions of temptation, such as places where liquor is sold, and persons who will urge it upon him. Even the wine given at the communion table should be avoided. “_That sip might be enough to awaken the desire; the mere odour of the wine filling the church might be too much for some men._”[368] This is the deliberately expressed opinion of one of the most experienced “inebriate” doctors in the States. As we have said, at present the American institutions are voluntary, but it is expected that there will one day be an asylum for incurable drunkards who will be forcibly detained, and compelled to earn their own livelihood.

This, then, is the position of the drink question in America. The contest between the sober portion of the community on the one hand, and the drink-sellers and their depraved customers on the other, a contest in which the state very properly sides with the cause of temperance, has successfully reached a stage far in advance of that which it has attained in Great Britain, and the people are devoting their energies and their inexhaustible resources to arrive at a practical solution of the problem which has hitherto puzzled all men and all ages.